Caurem talks end with CM going tough on allowing ore transport

The Caurem issue took a turnaround today with government going tough on the issue of terming the transport of e-auctioned ore illegal.

He warned the villagers against stopping transport of legal ore while refusing to conduct fresh inventory of the e-auctioned ore.

“I am however open for registering the villagers’ co-operative society”, he told goanews.com.

The second round of talks with tribal protestors of Caurem village with Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar continued today, this time in the presence of Mines Director Prasanna Acharya and officials of Fomento.

The protestors had today morning stopped ore transport of Fomento since CM had yesterday suspended all the ore transport from the Caurem mines till the talks are complete.

However, Fomento officials today told the meeting that their stocks are fully legal and refuted the allegation that the higher grade ore was shown as lower grade and bid for.

CM also told the villagers not to stop any transport where legalities are adhered to while telling them about high court directives to take action against those who stop ore transport.

He was furious about villagers telling him yesterday that the mines don’t have weighing board and departmental supervisors to monitor the ore transport.

“They told me lies while mines director today clearly showed all the records of weighing boards as well as the departmental monitoring”, he said.

Tribal leader Nilesh Gaonkar however alleged that the CM was talking about only Fomento mine in Caurem.

“The CM was not prepared to listen about other two mines and was accusing us as liars, claiming that we gave him wrong information yesterday”, said Gaonkar.

According to the tribal leader, Fomento as well as Magnum and Dinar Tarcar had bid for the ore extracted from their own mines, showing it low grade when actually it is high grade.

But Mines Director Acharya reportedly refused to buy this argument, stating that neither grades are shown wrong nor the stocks are shown less than its real quantity.

Gaonkar said the CM also did not listen to the fact that Magnum was transporting ore without putting it on weighing board.

It was thus clear that nothing different would happen after the talks for two days while the villagers are not decided about their future course of action.

“We cannot decide our future strategy unless we discuss with the villagers. But we expect support from all the concerned citizens of Goa to support our struggle”, said Gaonkar.